Washington, D.C. – Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (R-TX), Vice Chairman of the House Rules Committee, delivered the following remarks while managing the Rule Debate for H.R. 3799, H.R. 3564, and H. Res. 461.
As prepared for delivery:
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and underlying bills. Today, the Republican Majority continues its long process of reversing the damages inflicted upon the American people by the Biden Administration and the previous Democrat Majority.
Mr. Speaker, included in the rule is H.R. 3799, the Custom Health Option and Individual Care Expense Arrangement Act, or CHOICE Arrangement Act, introduced by my friend from Oklahoma, Kevin Hern.
This legislation includes commonsense changes to help lower health insurance costs, increase competition in the health care market, and ensure access to high-quality, low-cost health care plans for American small business owners and their employees.
In 2021, 54.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based health coverage. Employer-based coverage is easily the most popular option for Americans to receive health insurance coverage. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, of small employers that did not offer health insurance coverage to employees, two-thirds reported that the reason they do not offer health insurance is because it is too expensive.
In 2019, the Trump administration published regulations allowing employers to provide their employees with a fixed amount of money each year in a tax-preferred “individual coverage health reimbursement account” that the employee can use to buy coverage in the individual market.
Current regulations allow employers to establish individual coverage health reimbursement accounts, which employees can use to purchase individual market coverage and pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses. The CHOICE Arrangement Act seeks to codify these regulations to provide tax-advantaged funds for employees to buy portable health insurance plans and requires notification to employers of the availability of these tax-advantaged health insurance benefits.
The CHOICE Arrangement Act also includes provisions codifying the right of small businesses to band together to form association health plans to offer pooled health insurance coverage to their employees. This legislation will give employers maximum flexibility in how they help provide coverage options for their employees by providing CHOICE Arrangements while also providing excepted benefits like dental plans, vision plans, accident, disability benefits, and more.
This legislation will also ensure that stop-loss coverage is not subject to Federal regulation under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). These commonsense changes will stop the Biden Administration from administratively making health care more expensive by regulating stop-loss coverage and ensuring that small businesses can remain competitive.
Mr. Speaker, also included in this rule, is H. Res. 46, which condemns the practice of retrofitting our children’s schools to house illegal immigrants. President Biden and Democrat’s failures at the southern border are so comprehensive, so overwhelming that municipalities are now co-opting the schools where we educate our children because President Biden refuses to secure our southern border. Because President Biden cannot, will not secure our southern border, Mr. Speaker, our local communities and municipalities are now casualties of President Biden’s Border crisis.
The American people rightfully demand that President Biden and Democrats in Congress acknowledge this crisis. They demand that they not only acknowledge the crisis, Mr. Speaker, they demand that their federal government solve this self-made crisis that is pushing our communities well past their breaking points. New York and its Mayor Eric Adams, Mr. Speaker, are the first to cry uncle.
Two months, Mr. Speaker, that is how long Mayor Adams and New York City lasted, suffering under conditions of a size and scale not even comparable to the conditions that Texans have been enduring these past two years under an Administration that only started to pay attention to this humanitarian crisis when it started to affect THEIR constituents. We have pleaded with the Biden administration to take this crisis seriously only to be rebuffed time and time again. This humanitarian catastrophe can be laid squarely at the feet of Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden, who have chosen to do nothing rather than be labeled xenophobes by their progressive colleagues for enforcing our immigration laws and securing our southern border.
Mr. Speaker, the temptation for the Biden administration has been to bury their heads in the sand and hope that the waves of illegal immigrants across our border will finally abate. They won’t, Mr. Speaker. Not until President Biden finally gets serious about the border crisis by demanding that the Secretary of Homeland Security do his job and secure our southern border.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides consideration for H.R. 3564, the Middle Class Borrow Protection Act of 2023.
This bill would repeal the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recalibrated single-family pricing framework to guarantee mortgages, which would charge borrowers with higher credit scores larger fees to subsidize borrowers with lower credit scores.
If not for our Republican Majority, Mr. Speaker, one out of every two borrowers with higher credit scores would be assessed higher mortgage fees in President Biden’s radical equity agenda.
President Biden is telling the American people that if you work hard, if you are responsible with your finances, if you pay your bills on time, you will be forced to subsidize the mortgages of those who did not make those same sacrifices that you did to attain a high credit score.
This sends a terrible message to the American people, Mr. Speaker. I thank Mr. Davidson for bringing us this vital piece of legislation that underscores that the Republican Majority stands with those middle-class families who have done the right thing and should not be punished by a radical administration that is obsessed with radical wealth redistribution schemes.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I support the rule and the underlying measures. I thank my colleagues for their diligence and hard work in bringing these important pieces of legislation to the floor today. The Republican Majority has demonstrated yet again that we are putting forward a legislative agenda that works for all Americans and not just the well-connected few.
